U.S. Coast Guard to join search for South Korean fishing trawler's sailors in Bering Sea
PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY. Dec 2 (Interfax) - A U.S. Coast Guard vessel may join the search for the 54 missing sailors from the South Korean fishing trawler sunken Oriong-501 offshore the Chukchi autonomous region in the Bering Sea on Wednesday, the maritime rescue service of the Federal Agency for Maritime and River Transport of Russia said on Tuesday.
"According to the Federal Security Service's border department in the Kamchatka territory, the Wednesday arrival of a U.S. Coast Guard ship in the rescue operation area is in the process of coordination," the report said.
A C-130 Hercules plane of the U.S. Coast Guard will visit the search zone again on Wednesday, it noted.
Earlier reports said a C-130 Hercules military transport plane of the U.S. Coast Guard was flying above the wreck site for several hours on Tuesday. But the weather is very bad there. The seas are stormy, winds are high, there is a blizzard and the visibility is almost zero.
Four Russian fishing vessels - the medium-sized fishing trawler Karonina-77 whose captain has been appointed to supervise the search-and-rescue effort, the large refrigerator trawler Zaliv Zabiyaka, the super trawler Pelageal and the ship Vladimir Bradyuk - are searching the seas for the missing sailors,
A number of empty inflatable rescue rafts from the Oriong-501 have been found in the search zone but none of the 54 people missing have been located. The operation was suspended until Wednesday morning, local time.
The South Korean fishing trawler Oriong-501 sank off the coast of the Chukchi autonomous region in the Bering Sea at 5:30 p.m. local time (8:30 a.m. Moscow time) on Monday.